With the war in Iraq now into its fifth year, it is no wonder that it is a major issue in the upcoming Presidential election. The US has already been fighting there longer than it took to defeat the Germans in either World War. The battle for Baghdad has lasted longer than the American Civil War. Only the conflict in Vietnam has taken more time and that is no coincidence. The US does not like to admit that they are not going to win and the results of these longest of American wars will almost certainly be similar.

But back to the Presidential campaign. There are some major differences in the candidates’ positions on the war, but there are also some things that they all refuse to say.

For instance, the issue of whether it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place (which I believe it obviously was) is addressed very differently by the various Presidential hopefuls. Of course, none of the Republican candidates are admitting this, although Chuck Hagel is saying that President Bush’s troop surge plan is the biggest blunder since Vietnam, but not acknowledging that the war itself and his vote in favor of it was also a mistake. Among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have joined their opponents from across the aisle in refusing to admit that their votes authorizing the war were a mistake. Fellow Democrats, John Edwards and Christopher Dodd, are willing to admit their errors and denounce the war, but Barack Obama doesn’t have to do that because he wasn’t in Congress when the war began.

The second statement that is never uttered, and this time the avoidance crosses party lines, is that the lives of the more than 3000 US service men and women lost in the war have been wasted. I know that this must be a painful idea for their families to accept, but, even if overthrowing Saddam Hussein and bringing freedom to the Iraqi people was a worthwhile goal, the vast majority of US casualties have occurred since that was accomplished. Thank God my brother and my cousins returned unscathed, but, if one of them had been killed, it would have been a waste. They would have died for nothing more than a President’s attempt to recover from a terrible miscalculation. I know that both Obama and John McCain used the word “wasted” in statements about the war, but they both retracted those statements and claimed they had misspoken. It seems that the correct euphemism for losing one’s life or limbs in this war is “sacrifice”.

The third statement that no Presidential hopeful will make is, “America will not win this war.” Like I said before about Vietnam, it is a national trait to refuse to accept anything other than victory. I don’t expect to hear any serious candidate say it. The funny thing is that victory could have been declared a long time ago and lives would not have been wasted. The prewar stated goal of making sure that the US is safe from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was accomplished long ago. It turned out that they didn’t exist, but even the most paranoid US citizen doesn’t have to worry about it anymore, so the war is a success. Right? I guess no one accepts that one.

As I stated earlier, Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq’s citizens were freed from his oppression. OK, let’s call that a success. The war accomplished this secondary goal. But maybe he would have escaped custody and reestablished his tyranny. Well, he can’t do that now since he has been executed. Victory could have been declared at that point, albeit with a weaker claim that the US deaths were not a waste, but it wasn’t.

No, George Bush is set in his grand dream that Iraq will become a US-style democracy, with religious freedom and equal rights for all. This noble result will cause democracy to sweep across the Middle-East and turn potential terrorists into little American clones. It ain’t gonna happen. And as long as the Administration clings to this fantasy, lives will continue to be wasted.